Linux 6.8-rc4 Released With Bcachefs & NTFS3 File-System Fixes, Transmeta Crusoe Fix

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 6.8-rc4 Released With Bcachefs & NTFS3 File-System Fixes, Transmeta Crusoe Fix

As more exciting than the Super Bowl (at least for some of us) is the new Linux 6.8-rc4 kernel available for testing...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.8-rc4-Released

[hedonist]

Awesome! I'm very excited for the future of linux with all these new technologies progressing. Especially excited for bcachefs on desktop linux!

[stiiixy]

So, what actually is bcachefs's sales pitch? Is it the same but better than btrfs? EXT4 killer? All new and shiney tech to reduce staleness for future proofing?

[waxhead]

So, what actually is bcachefs's sales pitch? Is it the same but better than btrfs? EXT4 killer? All new and shiney tech to reduce staleness for future proofing?

The speed of ext4/xfs with reliability and robustness ahead of features is supposed to be the sales pitch as far as I can gather. But as I see it there is a lot of (admittedly) cool features talked about, but not so many reliability features implemented yet as far as I can tell. Scrubbing for example is missing.

I am myself biased towards btrfs, but bcachefs plans for many of the features I as a btrfs user would love to have so it will be interesting to see how it eventually turns out in the long run. Regardless of what filesystem you choose: have tested backups if you value your data.

[Mitch]

So, what actually is bcachefs's sales pitch? Is it the same but better than btrfs? EXT4 killer? All new and shiney tech to reduce staleness for future proofing?

It aims to be faster than other advanced multi-disk filesystems but it also has tiering, which only ZFS has, but implemented much differently. It'll have many important differences with those other filesystems and unique features.

So it's fundamentally going to be a new choice, and it's in-kernel now so you don't need any special modules or extra work to use it.

Some rather major features are still WIP so just be aware of that (e.g. scrub and heal-on-read).

[EmanuC]

It aims to be faster than other advanced multi-disk filesystems but it also has tiering, which only ZFS has, but implemented much differently. It'll have many important differences with those other filesystems and unique features.

So it's fundamentally going to be a new choice, and it's in-kernel now so you don't need any special modules or extra work to use it.

Some rather major features are still WIP so just be aware of that (e.g. scrub and heal-on-read).

All these features that you mention as unique to Bcachefs do you think can't be implemented on Btrfs?
(Meanwhile bcachefs doesn't offer basic functionality that btrfs has, like send|receive, scrub ...)
It's just a matter of developer interest, but some features can be implemented on Btrfs too, so I don't see this exclusivity as there is between traditional filesystems like ext4|xfs and advanced filesystems like btrfs|bcachefs.

- https://github.com/btrfs/linux/issues/559
- https://github.com/btrfs/linux/issues/556
- https://github.com/kdave/btrfs-progs/issues/610

[stiiixy]

The speed of ext4/xfs with reliability and robustness ahead of features is supposed to be the sales pitch as far as I can gather. But as I see it there is a lot of (admittedly) cool features talked about, but not so many reliability features implemented yet as far as I can tell. Scrubbing for example is missing.

I am myself biased towards btrfs, but bcachefs plans for many of the features I as a btrfs user would love to have so it will be interesting to see how it eventually turns out in the long run. Regardless of what filesystem you choose: have tested backups if you value your data.

I have no intention of using it for a long time. Was burned out enough from BTRFS early days and don't have the time now for it.

[hedonist]

All these features that you mention as unique to Bcachefs do you think can't be implemented on Btrfs?
(Meanwhile bcachefs doesn't offer basic functionality that btrfs has, like send|receive, scrub ...)
It's just a matter of developer interest, but some features can be implemented on Btrfs too, so I don't see this exclusivity as there is between traditional filesystems like ext4|xfs and advanced filesystems like btrfs|bcachefs.

- https://github.com/btrfs/linux/issues/559
- https://github.com/btrfs/linux/issues/556
- https://github.com/kdave/btrfs-progs/issues/610

The features of bcachefs will never be implemented in btrfs because the btrfs devs have never planned to add the bcachefs features into btrfs, they also work much differently and have different end-goals.

[EmanuC]

The features of bcachefs will never be implemented in btrfs because the btrfs devs have never planned to add the bcachefs features into btrfs, they also work much differently and have different end-goals.

Do you speak for the Btrfs developers or are you one of them?
Are there any technical limitations?
For example, the Tiering functionality, already implemented by Netgear [1] and not merged upstream and from the Btrfs developers I have not read any comments about "we will never implement this functionality".

1 - https://github.com/kdave/btrfs-progs...ent-1493204410

[Mitch]

All these features that you mention as unique to Bcachefs do you think can't be implemented on Btrfs?
(Meanwhile bcachefs doesn't offer basic functionality that btrfs has, like send|receive, scrub ...)
It's just a matter of developer interest, but some features can be implemented on Btrfs too, so I don't see this exclusivity as there is between traditional filesystems like ext4|xfs and advanced filesystems like btrfs|bcachefs.

- https://github.com/btrfs/linux/issues/559
- https://github.com/btrfs/linux/issues/556
- https://github.com/kdave/btrfs-progs/issues/610

I don't have an opinion on whether they will or can be implemented. I just haven't seen them done nor planned so far. I hope they do add more things to BTRFS. It's a great filesystem, though they do have their priorities and I wouldn't be surprised if they simply don't implement some features because it just isn't a priority for Meta and whoever else is funding the development.